Also Today

This is the day St Benedict of Nursia (c. 480 – 547), founder of Western monasticism and author of the Benedictine Rule, is remembered.

His life is best recorded in the Dialogues of Pope Gregory the Great. No small figure in the course of Medieval history, he founded twelve monasteries and his rule was the basis for many religious to come. Although his life's ambitions were to be an eremite, a cenobitic monastery in Subiaco begged him to become their abbot. He accepted, and soon the monks were trying to poison him (perhaps the first inspiration for the necessity of a Rule). He retreated again as a hermit, but others began to flock to him, having heard of miracles attributed to him, and hence the twelve monasteries of thirteen men each and a thirteenth in which Benedict himself dwelt till the end of his life.

He is the patron saint:
against poison, nettle rash, temptations, and witchcraft; of agricultural workers, cavers, civil engineers, coppersmiths, dying people, erysipelas, Europe, farm workers, farmers, fever, gall stones, Heerdt (Ger.), inflammatory diseases, Italian architects, kidney disease, monks, nettle rash, Norcia (Italy), people in religious orders, schoolchildren, servants who have broken their master's belongings, speleologists, spelunkers.

So for all you speleologists and spelunkers, you who suffer from erysipelas or have broken your master's belongings, here's to St Benedict!